Sometimes I wonder what I would have been like if certain things hadn't happened in my life, if instead of where I'm at now (and where I've been) I would have remained in Alabama in the same small town in which my parents still live, if I'd chosen a path that most people I knew in high school chose. I wonder what tomorrow would be like for me, if I would have this same feeling I have now, this same hope of possibility, this same nervousness that we've come this far and we can't lose now. I wonder if I would have the same fear that my parents and many like them have, a fear that masks something else (he's Muslim, he's got a weird name, he's a socialist), and we all know what that something is.
I wonder if the Alabama me would wake up early in the morning and stand in line in the rain for godknowshowlong and for the first time in his life vote with absolute conviction and pride.
I wonder if I would have ever read Langston Hughes or be thinking of Langston and Ralph and James and Richard and Zora tonight. I doubt it. But maybe... I can't wait for tomorrow.
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Daybreak in Alabama
by Langston Hughes
When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
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